Agricultural workers throughout Sudan report they must significantly reduce summer planting due to escalating global fuel and fertilizer prices connected to the Iran conflict, further threatening food production in a nation where ongoing warfare has created severe hunger.
Eight agricultural workers from various regions of Sudan, along with industry specialists, informed Reuters that rising fuel and fertilizer costs would worsen challenges created by civil warfare, affecting essential domestic crops including sorghum and millet, plus export products like sesame.
Sudan faces particular vulnerability to consequences from the Iran crisis because it depends on the Gulf region for more than half its fertilizer requirements, based on U.N. data, while warfare between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has made it completely reliant on fuel imports.
The nation already stands at the center of an emerging global food crisis during a period of declining aid funding. Approximately 19.5 million people, representing more than 40% of the population, experience crisis-level hunger, with certain areas facing famine risk, according to a U.N.-supported monitoring group.
Sudan’s farming capabilities have attracted Gulf investors, but the industry has suffered from decades of poor management and conflict. Roughly two-thirds of residents depend on agriculture for income.
The regional warfare has added “salt to the wound,” stated Sadig Elamin, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s senior food security analyst in Sudan, cautioning that total production might decline by “not less than 40%.”
Continued disruption threatens to worsen hunger “well beyond the current food crisis,” the U.N.’s humanitarian office reported this month.
Following more than three years of warfare in Sudan, the army controls central and eastern areas, while the RSF has strengthened its hold on western Darfur. Both forces battle over the extensive Kordofan region between them, essential for agriculture.
For agricultural workers in southern Omdurman’s Jamuia scheme, this planting period should have shown promise, after the RSF, accused of destroying irrigation channels and water equipment, was forced from the area near capital Khartoum one year ago.
Currently, however, farmers confront fertilizer costs increased 67% from the previous year and fuel prices — including diesel for irrigation equipment — that have more than doubled, based on national assessments.
“At that price we don’t make a profit, you spend your whole profit on the diesel,” stated one farmer, Bashir Ismail.
Just 500 of 10,000 total feddans (4,200 hectares) have been planted approximately halfway through the planting period, reported Omar al-Ebeid, secretary for the scheme’s farmers’ committee.
Meanwhile, farmers express frustration that the army-aligned government, with its budget reduced to support the war effort, has not assisted them.
“The RSF left in February of last year. Nothing has been fixed since then,” said Mohamed Balla, head of a farmers’ collective in the Gezira scheme, which generated around half the nation’s sorghum and wheat before the country’s conflict.
While fuel and fertilizer costs have increased dramatically, prices for harvested crops have remained unchanged.
National grain production, which had already declined by 25% from pre-war levels, according to the FAO, could drop further.
“Two sacks of wheat buy you one sack of urea. So we won’t grow it again,” Balla stated.
Sudan’s government-supported Agricultural Bank should help fund farmers but has been impacted by the conflict like other financial institutions. It has set agricultural input prices too high and product prices too low, Balla and others report, forcing farmers into debt.
The bank’s head informed Reuters it would work to “alleviate the burden” on Sudanese farmers by providing inputs with better terms over extended periods.
The Agriculture Ministry’s director for agricultural production, Fatma Yousif, said the ministry had reached agreement with the bank to establish a new fund to finance as much as feasible.
The ministry was examining ways to support farmers with fuel expenses and was working on restoring irrigation channels, having repaired pumps in multiple locations, she told Reuters.
In Kordofan and Darfur, ongoing lawlessness threatens production of sesame, peanuts, gum arabic, and millet.
“There is no funding for farmers, no machinery for planting and ploughing the land, and no security because the RSF and other gangs loot the crops and demand money at every checkpoint,” said Mohamed Adam, a farmer displaced from West Kordofan state to army-controlled El Obeid in North Kordofan.
An RSF spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The group has previously denied targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Three farmers from the region told Reuters that tractors were stolen during raids and farmhands recruited for fighting, while entire communities had been displaced, meaning minimal land has been prepared in rain-fed fields for the coming season.
Khalid Abdellatif, director at CTC Group, one of the country’s largest agricultural suppliers, said transporting supplies to the regions was costly and dangerous, with small-scale subsistence farmers particularly struggling.
